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LinkedIn\u2019s Blake Lawit,<\/a> the chief global affairs and legal officer of the Microsoft-owned professional networking site, confirmed in an interview at the Semafor World Economy<\/a> summit this week that the company\u2019s data shows a decline in hiring of around 20% since 2022.<\/p>\n However, he pushed back at the idea that AI was to blame.<\/p>\n \u201cAt LinkedIn\u2026 we have an economic graph which is over a billion members. We\u2019ve got companies, jobs, skills. It\u2019s really an amazing real-time view of what\u2019s happening in the labor market. And we\u2019ve looked \u2014 because everyone wants to know the answer to this question: Is AI impacting jobs right now? We\u2019ve looked and, honestly, we haven\u2019t seen it,\u201d he said during his interview.<\/p>\n Instead, the executive suggested that the decline in hiring was more closely tied to a rise in interest rates.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have not seen the sort of impacts that you would expect to see in areas that everyone is talking about AI\u2026 like industries, whether or not it\u2019s customer support, or administrative, or marketing \u2014 all these places that if we were seeing impacts [from] AI that\u2019s where it would be,\u201d Lawit continued. <\/p>\n \u201cYes, hiring\u2019s down, but not down more,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Lawit also noted that LinkedIn\u2019s data didn\u2019t indicate that the decline in hiring of college-aged young adults getting their first jobs was \u201cdown more,\u201d either, when compared with people who were in the middle of or later in their careers.<\/p>\n Still, he didn\u2019t rule out that things could change. <\/p>\n \u201cDoesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s not going to happen in the future, but not yet.\u201d<\/p>\n On that point, however, Lawit had a warning of sorts. Lawit noted that over the last several years, the skills that are needed to do the average job have changed 25%. With the rise of AI, LinkedIn expects that figure to be 70% by 2030.<\/p>\n \u201cSo, even if you\u2019re not changing jobs, your job\u2019s changing on you,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n